Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we complete our series within a series on walking simulators, this time with The Stanley Parable. We talk about the multiple paths, the humor, the zany meta of it all, and then turn to our takeaways. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: All of The Stanley Parable

Issues covered: preconceptions, focusing on different things, a good capper, a career of meta, goals for different walking simulators, recognizing the player, having the opportunity to ignore the narrator, talking about the broom closet, following directions, some of the Ultra Deluxe, the jump button, the skip button, not making something so new that it's unrecognizable but making it fresh, interactive theater and cinema, always going the opposite direction from the way the designer wants you to go, the structures which bind our lives, constraints generating interesting experiences, extreme focus and constraints, the impact of voice work, playing with constraints, playing against expectations, being in conversation with the player, is subverting expectations a genre mechanic?, recognizable human spaces, communicating through a shared humanity, a comparison with an alien space.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Davey Wreden, William Pugh, Galactic Cafe, Crows Crows Crows, Kevan Brightley, Severance, Firewatch, The Beginner's Guide, UFO 50, Hideo Kojima, Wanderstop, Crows Crows Crows, Gone Home, Dear Esther, Portal, Mousetrap, Agatha Christie, Bandersnatch, Brian Eno, Clue, Memento, Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, Outer Wilds, BioStats, Adventure, Chris Hecker, Rogue, Rogue Legacy 2, Animal Farm (obliquely), SNES, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time: TBA!

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